Three games about religion
Ron Edwards:
Hi Luke, and welcome to the Forge!
(To see how Luke got here, check out Vincent's companion discussion to this thread at Anyway, Hooray for religion).
You've nailed it. The disconnects are exactly where I see the most content.
Your theory question is a good one. I'm referring to my ongoing Big Model theory, particularly at the Techniqes level. But to get there, I began with very strong Color-based ideas and images for what the fiction was supposed to look like, not necessarily in terms of plot so much as literal visual imagery. Even "visual" isn't enough - a lot of my take on the red-game material is tactile and olfactory, such as the feel of a concrete sidewalk curb and the smell of the homeless guy's spilled possessions. Or what it's like to move through your own house in the dark, being familiar enough with it and sleepy enough not to want to the light, but encountering a slight strangeness nonetheless. Or more dramatically, once I was hit unbelievably hard with a full-contact jumping spin-heel kick, just below the eye (he was aiming at my temple and I almost evaded it), but was not knocked out, and kept fighting - like that, continuing to function in a completely altered state of mind/consciousness. Regarding the ophite game, I don't know if you've ever dreamed in the following fashion, but I did it a lot when I was a kid and sometimes now too: beginning with reading a book or watching a TV show, and then finding myself in it, being the character in it ... and the dream then proceeds sometimes from the watching/audience perspective and sometimes within the doing-perspective, the latter with out without knowledge of being watched. My Color-take on the ophite material was a lot like that, bordering on my occasional desire, while reading a truly outstanding comic such as Dykes to Watch Out For,* to be in the strip myself, talking and jiving with the characters. For Relic, I kept imagining a stone column which remained standing even as the church around it evolved into new forms, was burned, rebuilt, et cetera, all the while with a skull sitting in its niche, being perceived and treated differently each time. It looked like it was drawn by Mike Mignola.
Oh! One other thing: each was built off a Ronnies list, two of which were used a couple of months later in the 2011 Ronnies. The ophite is "morning" and "wings," and Relic is "old" and "skull." The red-game used two terms from a list I haven't applied to a Ronnies round yet. I can fairly say that each process began strictly off the terms pairs, which makes their thematic unity all the more interesting in retrospect. Clearly I was using the Ronnies technique as a deep-sea net-casting device into stuff I was really chewing over, down below.
So with all that as the starting point, or points because these games were definitely written (in the current not-a-game-text form) in sequence, here's where the Theory part starts: I basically threw out every imaginable thing I assumed about role-playing techniques into a bigger span of everything I could possibly imagine, and then rooted around in that huge box. So some of the things I chose came up familiar, and some came up weird, like the Universalis-like "round" structure of the red game and its collage technique, respectively. I actually think the weirdest thing I did among all three was the totally unconstructed speaking and card use in the ophite game, the precise opposite of most of the design trajectory at the Forge and Story Games for the past eight years or so.
I think, in retrospect, that "theory" is too vague a term. I was not merely working from theory (the Big Model itself, which implies any technique will do, as long as it's well-chosen for the larger scheme of Color and Reward), but from engineering-level hypothesis - "Hey, this looks like it might work and be lots of fun, so what if it's never been done." As for why I came up with the particular combinations for each game, all I can say is that for all three of these things, I found it to be a visceral and indeed involuntary creative experience.
THE WORD "BELIEF" MAY BE AN MMM-MMM SOUND INSERTED INTO A SENTENCE TO FULFILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED
The Anyway discussion has exposed to my eyes many problems with the term "belief" - it seems to stand in for just about anything. Apparently it's possible to refer to the doctrines of one's particular religion as one's beliefs even without practicing them, or to one's daily practices as beliefs even though they are actions and not ideas, so I'm tossing in this point for clarification. Here, I am not talking about how anyone else should use the term, but how I am using it. I am referring to personal certainty that particular claims (historical, spiritual, societal, anything) are true. Absolutely nothing else. (And by "certainty," I mean it fully literally, not merely "I'll go with that because it looks rational or supported by evidence," or, "I'll go with that because I like it.")
A possible response: but that could be about anything, not just religion. That would be correct, and it supports my point. Same goes for the observation that advanced study in many religions incorporates doubt as a feature of understanding.
That discussion has also exposed a perception, perhaps born in the Telephone game, that I am "rejecting" belief as a feature of religion, in the sense that it never happens or never matters. Granted, my phrasing was strong, and I do think the issue is so radically overblown that it obscures the most important features of religion as a human phenomenon. But my first post is written to alert the reader that my own personal interests in religion - as undeniably exposed by these three game-things - focuses on other stuff. That's not same as rejecting, in the sense of claiming that belief is not part of religion or not part of the religious experience or not ever relevant.
PERHAPS SOME MORE DEPTH, OR AT LEAST I THINK IT IS, FROM MY DINGHY IN THE SHALLOWS
If I had to come up with a single bumper sticker for dealing with all three of the more interesting topics of my current intellectual life, Creative Agenda in role-playing, an evolutionary perspective on human behavior, and the role of belief in religion, it would say, What it feels like is not why we do it.
The best explanation I've ever read for why someone "is" in or of a particular religion (as we say, "is" Catholic, "is" whatever) can be found here: War Nerd 29: West African ethnic geology at Exiled Online, especially this paragraph:
Quote
We like to think a person changes religion when they see the light, one person getting the beam of light straight from God like Saul before he changed his name and franchised the operation.
It’s not like that, never has been. If your ancestors came from Germany and your family’s Lutheran, it means most likely the Protestants were winning the Thirty Years War when they marched into your ancestors’ valley. If your family’s Catholic, Wallenstein was having one of his better days, before the loopy astrologers got to him. If your folks came from England, you know why you went Protestant: Henry needed sons and that Catholic girl he married wasn’t up to it. Your great-great grandpa didn’t see the light of true religion, he got the word at the end of a pike: “New church in town, any objection?” Not a lot of objections when a feral drunk in the King’s uniform is holding a dagger to your son’s ear.
Perhaps the associated point is too brutal for the internet, but this is the Forge and not fuzzy-sunbeam Anyway,** so I'll go ahead: when someone diverges or converts or divests from the religion of origin, not much changes for that person, in terms of their standards and values for what they want religion to be in their life. What does change if they are very fortunate is the people they associate with, if those people don't perpetuate the same shit that they were trying to escape from. But a lot of the time even that doesn't happen. The hunt for a new religion, or for some intellectual construction which rejects it, seems to me to be all about finding the exact same one which happens not to include whatever emotional rejection or stress was involved in the original circumstances.
So with those starting points in mind, what I'm saying here is that one can get all manner of personal feelings and results from participating in a given religion (which to my mind includes frantically haranguing people about why one is not or no longer in it), and it may seem very much, to oneself, as if that is why one is doing that. Whereas my view from the outside is that we, people, seem to have social and ritualistic needs which are met for the most part, world-wide, by religion (in tandem with its intricate political, educational, and family-clan features), and most religions get that far for a lot of people, for better or worse being a matter for further discussion. So it really doesn't matter much which one is involved, or if it does matter, the parameters for differences are not the same as the identity-politics labels we call each religion, i.e., its name as distinct from the other named groups.
But what the useful parameters for actual differences among religions is another discussion too, I think.
Best, Ron
* Irresistible time-sink archive here. To get an idea of the range of content I'd like to see in ophite-game play, see "Proxy War" and "Sleep's Sister," although these strips show the characters twenty years older than the strips that inspire the game.
** This is a long-running joke between Vincent and me, not an internet-style sideways slam. Laugh and move on.
Ron Edwards:
Oh yeah ...
Alfryd (Morgan, right? Morgue for short? Correct me if I've mixed you up with someone else.), you wrote,
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my own religious obligations as a kid were basically nonexistant, aside from formal occasions once or twice a year- weddings, confirmations, funerals, etc.
I'm going to single this out for some possibly-unpleasant dissection. What you describe is as far from "basically nonexistant" as one can get. What you did was real. It's part of your history as a person and part of your social identity as conceived by your family at that time. And sure enough, you went on to deflect into the irrelevant issue of the intensity of belief, as if the observance were canceled or made into a quaint detail due to the strength of that entirely different variable.
It floors me how often, among gamers, when I ask about initial religious upbringing, they say "Oh, none really," and then go on, sometimes requiring prompting, to describe actual and concrete observance just as you did. Fairly or unfairly, I'm pointing at your post and saying, "There. Right there. That's what I'm talking about," every time I refer to the slippery, evasive way that gamers seem to respond to this issue.
It may or may not matter that you happened not to mention which religion was involved. That's up to you to reflect on. But I am interested, in terms of our discussion here, to know what it was, so tell me if that's OK with you.
Best, Ron
C Luke Mula:
Real quick correction before I get into my response: I actually came here before I went to "anyway." I've been lurking at the Forge and reading through all of the (theory-related) Archives for almost a year now, and discovered Vincent and his site through this one. Not that anyone but me is interested to hear that, but there it is.
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THE WORD "BELIEF" MAY BE AN MMM-MMM SOUND INSERTED INTO A SENTENCE TO FULFILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED
I am referring to personal certainty that particular claims (historical, spiritual, societal, anything) are true. Absolutely nothing else. (And by "certainty," I mean it fully literally, not merely "I'll go with that because it looks rational or supported by evidence," or, "I'll go with that because I like it.")
Yes, I'm definitely seeing the "mmm-mmm" problem of "belief" as well, which is why I'm also having to learn to define my particular usage (even when no one else is using it like that).
Thanks for the clarification on what you mean by it in this instance; it clears up a lot of confusion I had about your design priorities and interests.
Quote
We like to think a person changes religion when they see the light, one person getting the beam of light straight from God like Saul before he changed his name and franchised the operation.
It’s not like that, never has been. If your ancestors came from Germany and your family’s Lutheran, it means most likely the Protestants were winning the Thirty Years War when they marched into your ancestors’ valley. If your family’s Catholic, Wallenstein was having one of his better days, before the loopy astrologers got to him. If your folks came from England, you know why you went Protestant: Henry needed sons and that Catholic girl he married wasn’t up to it. Your great-great grandpa didn’t see the light of true religion, he got the word at the end of a pike: “New church in town, any objection?” Not a lot of objections when a feral drunk in the King’s uniform is holding a dagger to your son’s ear.
I can't remember who exactly was the speaker (I'm thinking it was Sam Harris), but in a talk I've seen recently the speaker displayed a map of the world with dominant religions covering various regions. It was very much bound by geography and was obviously a matter of other historical events perpetrating or destroying religion.
Then he put up the same map of the world, but instead of religions labeling the colored regions, it was scientific Theories (Quantum, Relativity, Evolution, Electromagnetism, etc). Everyone laughed, and he said, "Truth does not spread like religion does."
I would add to his point, though, that art does spread the way religion does. Even through generations.
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Perhaps the associated point is too brutal for the internet, but this is the Forge and not fuzzy-sunbeam Anyway,** so I'll go ahead: when someone diverges or converts or divests from the religion of origin, not much changes for that person, in terms of their standards and values for what they want religion to be in their life. What does change if they are very fortunate is the people they associate with, if those people don't perpetuate the same shit that they were trying to escape from. But a lot of the time even that doesn't happen. The hunt for a new religion, or for some intellectual construction which rejects it, seems to me to be all about finding the exact same one which happens not to include whatever emotional rejection or stress was involved in the original circumstances.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. I am absolutely, 100% in agreement with you on this, and it seems weird to me that people aren't as aware of the fact that they're doing this as they should be. The Creative Agendas apply almost exactly to religious practice as they do to RPG play, and I definitely see that people who grow up in one agenda tend to practice with that agenda throughout their lives. Just look at the New Atheist movement (which has all the trappings and components of a religious movement): it is often practiced with the religious-equivalent of Story Now, and a lot of the movement's members come from Christian Evangelicalism, which is almost exclusively Story Now.
It seems that, because people assume that religion is one or two of the four things (culture, institution, beliefs, practices), when people drop those one or two things, they assume that they're not religious any more. But like you said, people only tend to move from one version of their religion to another. That's much easier to see when you have a healthy idea of how religion is actually influencing you, though (like the fact that you use a ring to symbolize your marriage even though you're "not a Christian").
By the way, great analysis of the four things that people are talking about when referring to "religion." You definitely nailed it.
C Luke Mula:
Sorry for the double-posting, but I need to amend my equivalence of Creative Agenda in rpg and religion:
The agendas don't necessarily have counterparts in all of religion, but they do in all instances of "faith."
"faith" - actually engaging in religious beliefs and putting them into practice
"engaging" - at least temporarily (though often permanently) suspending disbelief
"beliefs" - anything emotionally committed to that is not scientifically, objectively verifiable (as in, not a "fact;" includes opinions and convictions and lots of other things that don't necessarily relate to what we think of as "religion")
Okay, I think that about does it.
Callan S.:
Ron,
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as if the observance were canceled or made into a quaint detail
Well, when is something just a quaint detail, then? Never? Is there a grand halo of significant light on these things, or do you happen to have a halogen torch in your hand as you walk up to them?
My observance is that the less practical an activity becomes, the more obsessive it's pursuit (if any). Simply because once it leaves the practical realm, it slips the leash of any self corrective pattern - ie, it can never be wrong, because there is no practical metric left to judge it by.
What is the practical issues involved with such a contact? Is it different somehow from being exposed to Mc Donalds adverts on TV? I've heard theories that everyones in a cult. Whether it's a cult of keeping up wih the jone's, or a cult of coffee drinkers, or a cult of Nike wearers (ah, the hoodies...). I'd get that interest, but to just focus on being bored at a wedding during childhood seems to ignore the massive influx of other cults around, before and after it?
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